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Radiation: Unsafe at Any Level
- University of Wisconsin Press
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win syndrome, so that the cycle continues on its own, human beings in high places serving merely as puppets. Technology, abetted by the win syndrome, now encompasses the possibility—the likelihood—of total annihilation. The most important change needed today is—as Einstein noted—a change in thinking, a recognition that in a milieu of nation-states the splitting of the atom is, itself, the enemy. There can be no security for any people anywhere until that enemy is mastered. The superpowers should be able to arrive at an agreement for destroying their nuclear weapons stockpiles. The alternative is to wait for mutual destruction, and that is no alternative at all. —Sidney Lens was a journalist, peace activist, and labor organizer. His memoir was entitled Unrepentant Radical. Radiation Unsafe at Any Level Dr. Helen Caldicott december 1978 Radiation, the particles and waves emitted by unstable elements, has saved the lives of thousands of people when used to diagnose and treat disease. But little more than thirty years after its discovery in the late 1890s, scientists began to Wnd that radiation had a schizophrenic nature: It could kill as well as cure. Studies conducted over the past forty years have shown that many people irradiated in infancy and childhood for such minor maladies as acne, enlarged thymus, bronchitis, ringworm, tonsillitis, and adenoids have developed cancer of the thyroid, salivary glands, brain, pharynx, and larynx as much as thirty years later. Studies of uranium miners and people engaged in commercial activities, as well as of Japanese survivors of atomic explosions, have yielded enough evidence to demonstrate beyond doubt that cancer of the blood, lung, thyroid, breast, stomach, lymph glands, and bone occur in human beings as a result of exposure to radiation. It is diªcult to predict how many mutated children will be born in the world as a result of nuclear power and weapons production, or what the nature of their defects may be. But it is indisputable that the mutation rate will rise—perhaps far higher than we would care to contemplate. The massive quantities of radiation that would be released in a war fought with nuclear weapons might, over time, cause such great changes in the human gene pool that the following generations might not be recognizable as human beings. It is important that we keep in mind the fact that the nuclear industries are relatively young. Nuclear power has been in commercial production in the United States Caldicott / Radiation: Unsafe at Any Level 267 for only twenty-Wve years; arms production for thirty-Wve. Since the latency period of cancer is twelve to forty years, and genetic mutations do not often manifest themselves for generations, we have barely begun to experience the e¤ects radiation can have upon us. Nuclear power plants and military facilities will continue to release radioactive materials into the environment until public pressure becomes great enough to bring such releases to a halt. Because the e¤ects of these materials on us, our children, and our planet will be irreversible, we must take action now. We are entering a danger zone—an unchartered territory—from which we may never return. —Helen Caldicott, the founder of Women for Nuclear Disarmament, helped galvanize the nuclear freeze movement in the 1980s. Born Secret The Story Behind the H-Bomb Article We’re Not Allowed to Print Erwin Knoll May 1979 On Monday, March 26, 1979, a federal judge did what no federal judge had ever done before in the 203-year history of the American republic: He issued a preliminary injunction, at the request of the government of the United States, barring a publication from printing and distributing an article. Behind Judge Robert W. Warren, an American Xag was mounted on the ornate, oak-paneled wall of his Milwaukee courtroom. Before him sat the plainti¤s, oªcials of the government and their attorneys, and the defendants, the editors of this magazine and a thirty-six-year-old freelance writer, named Howard Morland, and their attorneys. The article was “The H-Bomb Secret: How We Got It, Why We’re Telling It.” All copies of that article that were in our possession, as well as the proofs from which it would have been printed, and the headlines, sketches, and covers that would have accompanied it are, at this writing, locked away. Under the terms of Judge Warren’s preliminary injunction, we, Howard Morland, and our “agents, servants, employees and attorneys, and all other persons in active...